Technical Field
The present invention relates to migration of operating systems between physical devices and, more particularly, to risk aware validation of operating system migration.
Description of the Related Art
Virtual machines allow multiple client operating systems to run on a single physical device with various input/output (I/O) resources being virtualized by a virtual I/O server (VIOS). In addition, a given client operating system may be migrated between physical devices, transferring the client operating system and any workloads to the new device. Migration may be performed while the client is active and running.
These migrations, or “mobility events,” are coordinated by a control point that communicates with the VIOSes on the source device and the VIOSes on the target device. Validation is performed to verify that the migration can be performed safely. During validation, the control point first establishes an inventory of the resources that are available to the client on the source device. It then confirms that sufficient and correct resources are available for the client operating system on the target device. If validation succeeds, then the control point initiates the migration.
Validation checks can take up a significant portion of the overall migration time. In addition, validation checks are often redundant, being performed regardless of how unlikely they are to fail.